Dell rings employment bell

CHANDIGARH: Now local youth can look forward to a future in BPO nearer home. The international giant Dell soon setting up shop in the city.
Even though the much-sought after BPO industry made waves in the city, the youth had to go all the way to the National Capital Region (NCR) in search of a job. IBM Daksh, Wipro Spectramind, Hewlett Packard, Infosys Progeon etc established in the NCR caused large-scale migration of talent from Chandigarh and the surrounding towns.
Till date, the region has lost out to others, as it was unable to attract any the big BPO firms.
"At an average of 150 to 200 talented youth are hired every month in the NCR region alone. In this process, the city has lost out," says Atia Noor, Director of Vision Unlimited, a BPO recruitment company for many firms including IBM, Wipro, GE and EXL.
But with the first BPO multinational company Dell setting up its third India contact centre in Mohali, experts say it is likely to trigger off an employment boom in this region.
The Dell centre, spread in over a 1.8 lakh square feet at Mohali, will support its growing global customer base. This initiative is euphoric and likely to get back the lost talent, says Noor. The managing director of Dell India Romi Malhotra says, "We recognised the potential Englishspeaking talent along with the good infrastructure facilities in close proximity to Delhi. Also the success of our two call centers gave us confidence to expand our operations with a new facility here."
The company is expected to start its operations by March 2005 with approximately 300 employees to start with. It will expand according to the needs. Dell has started recruiting and will hire technical support and customer relations agents as well as managers.
New employees will receive intensive information technology and customer relations skills training, says KS Narahari, Director (Corporate Communications) of Dell.
He adds that the new recruits will handle the US customers to start with and later expand to Europe.
Dell had opened its first Indian customer centre in Bangalore in 2001 and added a product group and global software development centre to the operation. This was followed by the second center at Hyderabad.
Experts predict that besides Dell, with two IT parks making rapid progress at Mohali and Kishangarh, a large number of companies would like to establish base north of Delhi. Convergys, Wipro and Hutch have already evinced interest in the QuarkCity. Some property management/real estate firms including CB Richards Ellis, Jones Lang LaSalle, Cushman and Wakefield, Integrated Property Management Services and Equis India have also shown interest in the project.